Retail leaders from Foxtrot, Global Partners, Stinker Stores, GetGo, Parker's Kitchen and EG America shared the types of technologies they are investing in.
The convenience-store retailers are implementing innovations such as backend inventory managers, new apps iterations, electronic shelf labels and more.
Read on to see what technology c-store retailers are leaning into in 2025.
EG America is No. 5 on CSP's 2024 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by size. Global Partners is No. 21. GetGo is No. 29, Stinker Stores is No. 66 and Parker's Kitchen is No. 86.
These answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Mike LaVitola, co-founder, Foxtrot
“Foxtrot started as an online delivery company, and we then morphed into retail… I founded the company with my co-founder Taylor [Bloom], who was, and still is, our CTO. And what we found pretty early on was most of the technology that we needed to run our business just didn't exist. There weren't off-the-shelf inventory solutions for running a couple thousand skews and hybrid, online-offline business. That just didn't exist. There was nothing to power the backend of our e-commerce app that also simultaneously tied in with our retail point of sale. There is no way to then take all that customer data from a loyalty program and plug it into these things.
We've built almost all of that technology internally, and that's really how we run the company. It allows us to work with a lot wider variety of vendors than we otherwise would be able to. At the heart, it's an inventory platform. But it allows us to understand sales trends, what to order when and to ensure that we have down-to-the-minute, accurate inventory between online and offline. It's what we receive products under. It's what powers our loyalty program. It's really an all-encompassing platform with the goal of really making it easy on our store teams.
[We can] say yes to any product that we want to. What we don't want to do is [say no] to a product because it’s coming through a certain distribution network. Sometimes you just have to go direct, and that's what keeps our product mix unique.
We've experimented with autonomous checkout, and it all feels a bit early. It's actually more cumbersome for the customer. At heart, we're a convenience store. We are about making things convenient. While it's kind of cool to have these bells and whistles, it's actually oftentimes more confusing for the staff, it's more confusing for customers.”
Jac Moskalik, vice president of food innovation and strategy, Global Partners
We’re going to be launching a new loyalty program and our new app, and we’re so excited about it. It’s going to be a lot more customer friendly. We’ll be able to target consumers with the data and understand their purchasing patterns with the data. We’ll be able to leverage that data to make better decisions and how best to talk to the customers in every need state. Our vice president of consumer insights will be using all the data we get from that to help us make better business decisions.
For example, we have an online ordering platform. You can have delivery out of our Alltown Fresh stores. With our new program, we’ll be able to use that data when they place an order online for pickup or delivery, and we’ll be able to use the data when they use their loyalty at the checkout in our stores. All that to trace the consumer experience as they go from the forecourt inside the store and out and look at what they’re buying.”
Nate Brazier, CEO and president, Stinker Stores
“We have done an immense amount of investment upgrading all of our technology and pretty much all areas of our business. I’d say the biggest one that sets the foundation for everything else is this past April we finished the implementation of PDI and NCR—and did it simultaneously. If you think about how massive that is of an undertaking, the team absolutely nailed it.
Why did we start there? We started there because, one, our old system was very antiquated. We knew we wanted to lean into a lot of the key technologies that we could see coming down the road and also the ones that were right there in front of our face that we couldn’t see because they couldn’t integrate well with our current base system. Implementing PDI and NCR was absolutely the foundation for us.
At the same time, we upgraded our Stinker app, and we rolled out what we call Stinker 3.0 in September. The results of that in such a short time frame have been absolutely amazing. Our usage, our penetration is much more than we expected it to be. We’ll define our capabilities this coming year in PDI and NCR and add additional value-add features on the app for our customers.
We'll actually be starting a pilot with Mashgin at the beginning of the year. One other piece of technology that we’ll lean into in 2025 is retail media networks. We've been evaluating what the possibilities and advantages are.”
Terri Micklin, president, GetGo
My focus has always been looking at technology that is easy for the customer or the team member. I don't look for the big, glorifying technology wins, but I'm more focused on, ‘Where are the things that they're almost seamless to everyone, but they unlock real value?’ So on the list for this past year, we're finishing up our final roll out of electronic shelf labels throughout our stores. We've been on this journey for a little over a year now, that's going to be finalized.
Why I love technology like that is, for the customer, all they see is that the price is clearly marked and the promotions are easy to read, but they really didn't know that we swapped that out with the piece of paper that was printed and stuck on by team members. For the team members, it's so easy now for them. The prices are centralized, they do have to do their checks, but they don't have to worry about the audit piece that comes with it because it's all taken care of for them. And ultimately, the goal of that technology is to take time that team members were spending in an office and spend them now in front of the guests. So that plays into our guest service culture. So that's just a simple example of the type of technology I like. I love things that are really seamless and just give your team members more time to interact with your guests.”
Brandon Hofmann, CEO, Parker's Kitchen
“We are enhancing our loyalty app to add more customizable offers. We are also aligning our Heroes charitable giving initiative to our Parker’s Rewards program by offering customized deals for veterans, police officers and first responders.”
Lisa N’Chonon, CFO and treasurer, EG America
“We all want to talk about AI. We have really been looking at rolling out some really cool tools that are helping in our decision making across all functional areas, whether it’s marketing with product placement or managing inventory and order level. It's really exciting.”
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